Chapter thirteen: Ashes of Eden

Chapter thirteen: Ashes of Eden

The silence screamed louder than her rage. Benzosia hurled another crystal vial; it shattered against obsidian, the mocking scent of long-dead roses blooming momentarily in the stale air of her opulent cage. The crashing sound offered bitter satisfaction. Her breath ripped through her raw throat, each gasp a struggle against the crushing weight on her chest – fury, grief, and a violation so profound it felt etched onto her very soul.

“Liars!... Monsters!....BETRAYERS!” Gadreel's terror-filled gaze haunted her, along with the memory of  Basileus’s smile. And Asmodeus… oh, sweet degradation, Asmodeus. A violent shudder wracked her. She could still feel it, a phantom echo deep within – her body shivering beneath him beneath as her light, her essence, was drawn from her, siphoned into the terrifying void of his being, leaving her fractured, hollowed, eternally less. In their bed, she had dominion over neither her body nor her soul.

A profound ache radiated from her bones, her limbs leaden with the weight of her own poison. She felt rage, yes – a burning, helpless fury – but beneath it, grief coiled like a serpent, striking at random. It felt as if she were coming undone. Her gaze snagged on the black-framed mirrors – reflections of a queen unraveling, eyes wild and blazing with madness, a trapped bird beating its  frantic wings against the bars of her cage. With a guttural cry, she snatched a heavy silver candelabrum, its weight satisfying, brutal. Crash! The nearest mirror exploded. Another! She swung again, shattering her own fractured image. Crash!

As she raised the weapon, muscles screaming, aiming for a mirror whose depths seemed to pulse with an unnerving darkness, a thin, frantic squeak pierced the chaos. “No, Queen! Mercy! Not this glass!”

Benzosia froze, arm high, chest heaving like a winded beast. From the shivering, cracked surface, a small figure solidified – the imp. Twisted obsidian horns glinted behind the glass; its leathery tail lashed the air, a desperate whip against unseen forces. She remembered this creature, it had shown her mercy when no one else would. “Why not?”

"It’s my home, Radiant One!" the imp wailed, voice like crushed autumn leaves. Its black-bead eyes darted, reflecting sheer terror. "Spare it, and I guide you to the hidden place!"

Benzosia lowered the candelabrum, suspicion casting a glacial flow over her burning rage. "The hidden place?" Her voice was a raw rasp. The world still tilted, the ghost of poisoned wine on her tongue.

"Yes! Where the First Fallen likes to wander!" the imp insisted, pressing against the glass. "I swear it on my miserable tail – I know the path!"

"Another trick," Benzosia spat, tasting ash. "I will not trust you."

“Are you sure?”. With a furtive movement, it pressed something small, cold, and metallic into her palm through the shimmering surface of the mirror. Benzosia’s fingers closed around it reflexively. 

“You seek the King, no?”

Slowly, she opened her hand.

It was Lucifer’s key. A tremor of dread, cold and sharp shot down her spine. She’d hidden the key with meticulous care, and yet here it was, heavy and real. The rage that had consumed her moments before didn't vanish, but it banked, overshadowed by this sudden revelation.

"Yes," the word cut through the silence within the ruined chamber. "I seek the hidden place." I seek my brother, the true King.

Relief washed over the imp’s leathery face. "Then follow! Quickly!" It dissolved back into the mirror's depths. Taking a ragged breath that scraped her lungs, Benzosia plunged after it, the transition like stepping through fire into a cold, dark mist.

The narrow passage beyond was suffocating, absorbing sound, light, hope. Cold, stagnant air smelled of eons-old dust and the faint, metallic tang of shed blood. The imp darted ahead, a frantic silhouette, its claws clicking nervously on the unseen stone, each tap echoing Benzosia's own hammering heart. Every shadow writhed; the oppressive silence felt intensely, malevolently aware.

"We’re here." The imp stopped, flattening itself against the wall, trembling violently. The silence became absolute, a vacuum that pressed on her eardrums, stealing her breath. Before them stood not just a door, but a scar on reality. A place that should not exist- yet loomed before her. A lock forged from metal that drank light.

“This is a..pocket realm?.”

Hope, painful and sharp, lanced through Benzosia. Lucifer… beyond this? She reached out. The imp squeaked, his leathery and wrinkled ears like dried fig leaves twitching. "The key, Majesty! Quickly!" Then, with a final, terrified glance backward, it unraveled into smoke and shadow, abandoning her to the labyrinth, and the mystery door before her.

Lucifer left me this key. The memory of his smile, bright as the dawn, warred with the crushing weight of his damnation. He did not wish to be king, everyone knew this. But after the fall he had created a refuge for the damned like himself, and she refused to believe he would so easily forsake his creation. Inhaling the cold, metallic air that stung her lungs, her hands shaking but resolute, she slid the key into the lock. A smooth, unnerving fit. Tumblers clicked – soft, final, profound. If I find him… if he returns… did she dare hope?. She pulled. The door groaned, a long, tortured screech of ancient hinges surrendering, rust cascading like flakes of dried blood. The sound vibrated in her bones. A chill deeper than fear snaked down her spine as she squeezed through, rusted metal tearing at her silks like eager claws.

The smell hit first – overwhelming, cloying, the sickly-sweet rot of life long dead but unnaturally preserved, a perfume of exquisite decay. Her eyes adjusted, stinging, to the dim, grey non-light. A strangled gasp tore from her throat. Startling when the heavy door slammed behind her – a futile gesture against the soul-crushing reality.

"No..." The denial was a whisper lost in the vast desolation. "No!"

Skeletal trees clawed a smoke-choked sky, petrified arms of the damned. The silver-barked copse where she and Lucifer wove star-flower crowns, their laughter echoing like celestial bells – now a hideous tangle of blackened thorns, the ground beneath cracked, barren, vomiting a foul miasma. Grey dust, thick and fine as powdered bone, coated everything, muffling her footsteps, clinging to her like a second skin, a shroud of profound loss.

Ash and forgotten time saturated the air, stinging her eyes, clogging her throat with grief. Phantom sounds – birdsong, wind chimes, the memory of Lucifer's voice humming an ancient melody – taunted the dead silence. Petrified vines writhed across the cracked earth, sculptures of exquisite agony. Blackened, paper-thin husks of flowers disintegrated at her horrified gaze.

"Eden..." The name was a broken sob, ripped from her very core. The cradle of creation. Ruined. Desecrated. Nothing left of the vibrant, blooming life but ash. She stood amidst the graveyard of divinity, a fallen angel herself, the unbearable weight of all that was lost pressing down, threatening to pulverize her. “You were brought  down and left to wither.” 

Lost, she drifted through the decay, drawn towards the dead heart of this forsaken paradise. The Tree of Knowledge. A petrified husk, bark cracked like ancient, weeping skin. Dust-filled orbs hung like mockeries of fruit. One crumbled to powder at her trembling touch. 

'Even you...' she whispered, grief a physical weight. As the dust particles sifted through her fingers, a cold wave of comprehension washed over her. The key… This devastation isn't a path to him, but a window into his exile. “This is the wound he carried.”  When the world of mortals was new, this garden had been paradise, a whisper of the beauty they had both known before the Fall. To see it like this… the thought of his agony upon witnessing such ruin tightened a band of ice around her own heart. This was a piece of his soul, flayed and left to rot, and he had wanted her to see it.

Driven by that chilling certainty, she knelt at the Tree's base, pressing her palms to the cold, unyielding earth. Dust bit at her skin like tiny, venomous insects. "Lucifer," her voice trembled, raw with desperation, "Come back. I'll mend this... I offer… everything. “All I have left.”

She reached deep, tearing into the ravaged core of her divinity. Memories of pure light, of soaring on untainted wings – each flicker was agony to recall, a drop of celestial grace offered to the dead soil. The aching cold bloomed within her, spreading like frostbite through her soul, stealing warmth, dulling the world's already bleak colours. Her inner luminescence guttered, siphoned away into the thirsty dust. It was an emptying, a profound hollowing that left her fragile, exposed, terrified of the void she was becoming. Yet, she pushed on, fueled by a love as fierce and desperate as her grief.

With a whispered plea, "Please brother, come back…", Benzosia poured the last vestiges of her fading essence into the blighted earth. The grey dust rippled, a tremor running through the petrified garden. A delicate hum vibrated within her very bones, a fragile echo in the oppressive silence. Beneath her outstretched palms, the frozen ground softened, a faint warmth stirring after millennia of cold.

Then, a flicker. Not of sight, but of sensation – a distant spark igniting within the vast, internal darkness that threatened to consume her. Faint. Precarious. Hope, sharp and unexpected, pierced the despair. Had he felt her? Had he heard?

The biting sting of ash lessened, a subtle easing in the poisoned air. A breath of impossible green, a phantom scent of life long lost, brushed her cheek. The unyielding earth gave way beneath her fingers. A sound, faint and pure as shattered crystal, trickled into the silence – water.

A wave of dizziness crashed over her. Empty, yet strangely resonant, she collapsed back against the cold, ancient bark of the Tree. The world swam. Drawing ragged breaths of the subtly revitalized air, she steadied herself. Filtered light, no longer purely grey, painted shifting patterns on the disturbed dust. Impossibly vibrant, tiny green shoots pierced the ashen shroud. The trickle of water deepened, becoming a fragile, hopeful murmur. Eden remained a ruin, scarred and desolate, but now, impossibly, it breathed. Tentatively. Within that fragile resurgence, bought with a devastating piece of her own light, a dangerous connection sparked, a treacherous seed of hope took root – a temporary, bittersweet defiance. Unlike Gadreel, she would not be extinguished by the void, her light would not be swallowed up by the void. No, in the heart of Hell's decay, her light had conjured a miracle, a secret, defiant bloom.